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For this specialist in defense issues, the city of Mariupol has passed into Russian hands, but the pocket of resistance in the Azovstal steelworks will be hard to master.
Pierre Servent, specialist in defense and military issues, estimated on Saturday April 23 on franceinfo that the city of Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine, “is conquered but not totally controlled” by the Russians. A strategic port for accessing the Sea of Azov, Mariupol has been under siege for nearly two months.
>> What is happening at the Azovstal factory, the last refuge for Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol?
Moscow announced on Friday that it was aiming for total control of southern Ukraine and the Donbass region. In Mariupol, “there are more than 100,000 civilians, including a thousand who were able to take refuge in the Azovstal steelworks”says the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
This is where the “last pocket” that the Russians are trying to “drop”, confirms Pierre Servent. This “last square of resistance over about 10 square kilometers”in this former metallurgical factory, is “a fairly complicated area to master”he says. “There would be between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters, in particular from the Azov battalion, who would be (…) in the tunnels and underground” which were once used to move ore carts, and “perhaps a thousand civilians”.
“The Kremlin’s policy is very clear: ‘not a fly’ should enter this place”recalls the military specialist, which explains the strategy “to encircle, to lay siege as in the Middle Ages”. Vladimir Putin does not want “especially not to risk a Russian soldier in an underground fight where there could be losses”explains Pierre Servent.